Nuccia, I'm sure it will be a very, very long time before I could participate in Italian. I can now ask people how old they are and what they are doing but I'm not sure they would appreciate that. But I am sure that an Italian forum would open up new opportunities for people to come on board that cannot speak English. So... why not? Seems like a good idea and a very thoughtful suggestion.

I am using Pimsleur - I found it is the one that I remember the most from. Plus it is teaching you 'real' Italian in the sense that you can actually understand the responses you are likely to get to your questions...

I am very very rusty with Italian now as I have not applied myself to lessons in just over a year now. That said, I attended the Procession for Our Lady of Mount Carmel at the Italian church in London yesterday and understood around 70% of what was said (which was a heck of a lot more than I expected to).

I looked up the Pimsleur Approach website. It looked very good also and the price was again comparable to Rosetta Stone. I guess there are several good programs out there.

I too wish I had started sooner. It would have been nice if my high school had offered Italian. My high school French did prepare me a bit for learning Italian. For example, I did know what to expect for the various verb tenses and feminine/masculine nouns. On the other hand, I keep wanting to say "Qu'est-ce que c'est ?" instead of "Che cos'è?" What your mind learns young it does indeed hold on to, Eleven!

I'm about half way through unit 3 of Rosetta Stone Level 1 now. Which means, I suppose that I am about half way through Level 1. It's still fun and I am still enjoying it. The difficulty is ramping up a bit but so far I can still handle it. The program now uses complete sentences fairly often, such as, "Lei dove scrive?" and "Di mattina, io scrivo al parco." But sometimes it still introduces one word at a time. I continue to be impressed with the photographic images. When introducing, "un piede" for example, they showed a close up photograph of the tiniest, most precious baby foot. I just wanted to reach out and touch it. And the concept of "puzza" was introduced by a child holding up a stinky fish. The look on the child's face conveyed the entire message. I'll keep you posted on how the program progresses. So far, I still give it a thumbs up.

I wonder how much of this you will retain in the long term. Most of what you typed, I understood. I wasnt sure about "parco" tho. But, I learned all of those words as a child. My husband and I slip a lot of Italian words in with the english..so even my children and their children know a little.

I still feel that it helps learning a language to read it as a 'story'. Of course it has to be simple and if the story is known - so much the better. If it is written for children - another plus.

I can remember reading Italian childrens stories to my nieces when they were little and I was still floundering around with words - never mind 'whole' sentences. But their childrens books really DID help.

Here is a link to some of the kind of books you may find useful - these include an illustrated vocabulary. They are a bit expensive, but maybe they can be found on eBay too! >Story Books<

Hi everyone!
I tried Rosetta Stone--didn't work for me. Gave it to one ofmy students. Using Pimsleur and Michel Thomas, but admittedly I don't spend enough time on either! Went to Scuola Koine in Italy in 2007 for 7 weeks. I forgot a lot, but it's coming back. If you have the chance, attending school while on vacanze is great. Most schools will let you choose # of days you want to attend. A great book to buy is Pirandello's 11 short stories. It has the English translation on one side, Italian on the other. And they are WONDERFUL stories that are quintessentially Italian. And classics. Stories you can read to kids. Amazon or B & N would have it.

Welcome, MariLouise, I would love to know more about your experiences with Pimsleur and Michel Thomas. I've heard good things about Pimsleur. How does the program compare to Rosetta Stone? I've never heard of Michel Thomas.

I also have a couple dual language short stories books that I got from Amazon. One is simply called "Italian Stories: A Dual Language book." Pirandello is one of the authors. I loaned my copy to my mother with the warning that most of the stories did not have American happy endings. They were all quite memorable and moving though.
Donna

Hi Donna, and thanks for the welcome. I would have to say that Pimsleur is VERY thorough, always reviewing--which I find helpful, as repetition is the key to recall. Pimsleur and Thomas are also very thorough about pronunciation. Michel Thomas gets mixed reviews from a lot of people. He himself is a character with an interesting history. Thomas' lessons puts together entire sentences rather quickly, so many find they are able to converse early on. For me, a combination of Pimsleur and Thomas seems to be working. As for Rosetta Stone, it's a great concept (pricey, whereas you can find Thomas cheaply on Amazon, and a friend gave me her Pimsleur), but it just didn't work for me. Others swear by it. I guess--for me--I need to know verb tense, which is guesswork with Rosetta. I never got through the 1st level (I got too frustrated), so my review probably doesn't do it justice.

Pirandello is wonderful, and yes, many of the endings are not happy ones (much like life). I love the Eleven Short Stories. I agree they are memorable--I laughed and cried!

MariLouise
And thank you also, Nuccia, for the warm welcome! I am so pleased Carole pointed me in this direction. This is an amazing site!

Progress Report
Today I finished another unit of Rosetta Stone’s Level I. Only one more unit to go in Level I. The title of this unit was “Work and School.” I worked on it for 30-60 minutes per day for about 2 weeks. I’m still very much enjoying the program. Somehow I actually find it relaxing. The difficulty is slowly ramping up. After sailing through the numbers from 1-100, the seasons, the days of the week, and a few countries, I got tripped up by some challenging new vocabulary. And the grammar is getting more complex. For the first time I had to repeat a couple lessons. For whatever reason, I had a lot of trouble learning the words assaggia, sveglia, asciutte, bagnati, asciugamano, and lenzuolo. I don’t know why but the words just wouldn’t stay with me and I had to do some extra work outside the program to retain them. I think I finally have them now.

I have kept a little notebook of the nouns and verbs that I have learned. It helps me to easily review what I’ve learned so far. So far there are about 150 nouns and 35 verbs. I have not been writing down any of the adjectives, pronouns, articles, etc. I had my little girl quiz me today on the nouns. I did pretty good, and I feel good about my retention so far, but screwing up the gender continues to be a problem for me. I have not had a problem with the verb conjugations…but the grammar is killin me.

I sometimes get frustrated with the “total immersion, no grammer rules” method. I usually tell myself, “trust the method, trust the method,” and most of the time the method eventually comes through…but if the method doesn’t clear up my confusion pretty quick I get out my reference book and I cheat. I find the cheating to be very helpful. So…onto the last unit which is called, “Shopping.”

Donna..there is a shopping unit? Awesome! Bet you will sail through that one!

As for the words you had trouble with before..it made me think. I have trouble with them! But I can say the in Calabrese with no problem (well a few of them anyway). God..you're making me think. Stop..its hurts too much!

Nuccia, that's funny! I've been wondering how much of this stuff is problematic for Italians also. Yeah, I'm looking forward to the shopping words also. There should be some fun stuff in there. And I can practice on the Italian ebay.

I've been using Italian with the kids here and there. I didn't think they were paying much attention but yesterday I told my son to shower because he was puzzo and he told me that I was pazza, so perhaps they are listenting. (Puzzo was a word from Rosetta Stone. Pazza was a word that was used with great regularity in my home growing up. Pazza and Madonna were both words that my mother used often. Both were accompanied with great gestures and an eyeroll. )

Eleven I love how the Italian words got North Americanized.. Do Z Pots! Thats a hoot. Donna, my mom used a few hand gestures of her own while we were growing up but I have to give her credit..she NEVER swore and can not until this day, understand where I got my "potty" mouth from!

I spent a lot of time talking in Italian to my parents about the kids when I didn't want them to understand something. I don't know why I didn't teach them - I think I just was always ashamed of the dialect. But it came back to bite me in the a$$ a few times. My husband (and I didn't know this since he didn't understand a word of Italian) actually now understands everything I say and the kids understand quite a bit so I got caught in a few little situations a couple of times.

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